


Set My Spirit Free

by lusilly



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Death, Gen, Well-Meaning Dumbledore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:59:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusilly/pseuds/lusilly
Summary: Newt Scamander writes a letter to Professor Dumbledore about a boy in New York whom he hopes survived. Dumbledore finds him, and he tries, and fails, to save him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this started out trying to give credence a happy ending but ya know, life is tough for an obscurial
> 
> fyi i literally just saw this movie and have no interest in whatever word of god canon jkr gave. I'm just working from my interpretation of the movie.
> 
> title from "my body is a cage" by peter gabriel because Ouch

           Credence Barebone is fifteen when he comes to in an old half-destroyed house, with bricks littered across the floor, violent evidence of the rupture which had occurred mere hours earlier.

           Beside him, his sister kneels. She is wiping his brow, which is bloody. Her cheeks are dirty and tearstained. When his eyes flutter open, her chin trembles, and she throws her arms around him. The embrace hurts. He says nothing.

           “I thought you were _gone_ ,” Modesty whispers.

–

           Credence is still fifteen when Newt Scamander writes a letter from his boxy little office at the Ministry to Professor Albus Dumbledore, though Credence and Modesty have fled since then from New York. Their mother, or the woman who had kidnapped them from their families, had an estranged brother in the countryside who lived a patient life on his farm. They go there. The man allows them to work for shelter and food. He sees the scars on Credence’s hands, and on his back when he strips to bathe. All at once, he remembers why he so hated his sister.

           Professor Dumbledore takes the letter and goes to see the Headmaster while students gather in the Great Hall for dinner. Armando Dippet thinks children in America should be left well enough alone, and to add to that, they can’t have an _obscurial_ at Hogwarts, it would wreak havoc and terror on the children.

           “Children come here to learn how to control their magic,” Albus protests.

           “Children come here to do so in safety,” counters Armando. “I won’t endanger that. And an obscurial’s magic is not their own anymore, Albus, it belongs to the creature inside of them. It’s uncontrollable.

           “Besides,” adds Professor Dippet, “he’s in America. Ilvermorny will take care of him.”

           Dumbledore wants to point out that Ilvermorny is so overrun by magical students they have no capacity to deal with an obscurial, certainly not until their branches across the country open. But instead he pulls a few favors, asks Minerva to cover his lessons and Wilhemina to cover Minerva’s lessons and invites Newt to come back to Hogwarts to oversee Care of Magical Creatures in the meantime, and then Albus Dumbledore goes to America.

           Magic this powerful leaves traces, and Albus has always been particularly gifted at detecting such things. New York is pulsing with magic much more so than he had anticipated, and this slows his search.

           In a crowded subway station, Albus can feel it: the powerful magic, the fear of a child. The stink of _him_ , like an unmistakable magical fingerprint. On days like these Albus does not miss Gellert Grindelwald. On days like these, witness to the ruthless lengths to which the man would go for power, Albus wants to hate him.

           He lingers in the subway station for some time, taking a seat and setting his hat down beside him. As he sits, the shifting currents of magic flurry with every train that rushes by. A woman pauses pityingly, opens a purse at her side, and drops a few coins into his hat before scurrying away. The anonymity of New York is strangely comforting. Albus breathes deeply. Magic lingers heady and powerful, like cologne.

           The boy he has come to America to find is fifteen years old. Albus remembers being fifteen years old, thinking arrogantly and carelessly that he could rule the world if he wanted.

           He thinks about the word, _obscurial_. The word evokes hiding, covering up, tucking something away into darkness. He thinks of Ariana. He thinks of a jet of green light erupting from his own wand.

           He follows the trail of magic out of the city, towards the rural countryside.

–

           Not much later in his life, Albus will meet another small child of immense power. Neither this story nor that one has a happy ending.

–

           Credence and Modesty were both torn from their wicked families by a fanatic who saw evil magic in every corner. She may have been paranoid, but her paranoia may very well have been more astute than Albus had intended on giving her credit for: the girl too possessed magic. Albus sits with them, sipping coffee offered by the man the children call uncle, and he offers to teach them.

           “You’d have to leave,” he tells them kindly, finished with his coffee. “You’d have to go far away from this place, from this country.”

           Modesty takes her brother’s hand, underneath the table.

           Her eyes are hard and determined.

           “When can we leave?” she asks.

–

           It’s an unusual case, but Hogwarts students have been inconsistent since the war, as some families flee and others return, as refugees and immigrants come from other countries, and children are needed at home more than their parents see a need for their education.

           Credence Barebone is Sorted into Ravenclaw in the Headmaster’s office, with his sister and Albus as witnesses. Modesty is young enough to join the First Years during the beginning of the year feast. She is a Gryffindor, which Dumbledore could have told anyone the day he met her. The siblings are separated by the Hufflepuffs, though Dumbledore sees Credence craning his neck to see his sister, and he sees Modesty turning around, searching the crowd for her brother.

–

           Credence turns sixteen in classrooms full of Fourth Years. He takes remedial lessons; excels in Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures, and even has the eye for Divination; and he has fitful dreams which keep the other boys up at night, sick and tired of the whimpering and cries. Once, in the middle of the night, Ravenclaw Tower is hit with a powerful blast of magic that nearly brings it toppling down. No students are hurt. The professors put it back together before dawn. Credence is escorted to the Hospital Wing.

–

           At seventeen, Credence repeats classes as a Fourth Year. Modesty visits him in his permanent bed in the Hospital Wing and teaches him what she’s learned.

           In his sixth year, after O.W.L. results which would disqualify most other students, Credence is too sick for school. Madame Pomfrey and visiting Healers from St. Mungo’s stream in and out of the Hospital Wing, as do various magical experts. Dumbledore does what he can to help the child, to ease the pain.

           He wipes sweat off Credence’s brow.

           Albus Dumbledore is satisfied with his life as a teacher. Part of it was, he thinks, the only way he could think to cope with the death of his sister, caring for children the only penance he could live with. At first he had hated it. Hated the reminders of what it had been like raising his siblings, being responsible for surly Aberforth and dear sweet dangerous Ariana.

           Credence is too much like Ariana. It hurts Albus. Hurts him to think of Grindelwald doing the same thing for Credence which Albus does now, to think of him grooming this child, using him for his own dark purposes.

           Albus hopes he is never so cold.

–

           Credence leaves Hogwarts when Modesty does, after her seventh year. He has been in the Hospital Wing for years now, surrounded by protective enchantments to keep his unstable magic contained. Modesty, who passes her N.E.W.T.S. with all O’s, visits him every day. She studies by his side, and reads to him from her textbooks. He clutches his wand – it is a hunk of wood, a children’s toy he has had since he was a baby. The ability to focus his magic into such an instrument is what kept him alive for so long. But the obscurus is waiting for him, widening, consuming his body and soul as it grows.

           Modesty takes her brother back to America. Some of the professors protest; he is too dangerous, they say, to let him wander freely. Albus lets him go.

–

           In 1940, Grindelwald returns to Europe with a vengeance, with a great and powerful destructive force at his beck and call, mysterious and frightening. For too long Albus has put off this duel. But when he thinks of dear sweet frightened Credence and the power he could not control, it ignites a fury in his belly.

           Before he deals the killing blow, the pulsing black evil Grindelwald commands dives to protect its master, and it materializes into a boy. Albus’s wand is raised against the apparition’s heart.

            _Kill me_ , he begs.

–

           Albus thinks of Ariana, and he cannot.

–

           Grindelwald winds up in Nurmengard, and the obscurus in Newt Scamander’s magical suitcase. Dumbledore finds Modesty in America, working in the Magical Congress. She won’t speak to him.

–

            _Some children_ , Albus has to tell himself in order to survive this pain, _are born to die._


End file.
